GOP braces for extinction-level disaster as Americans revolt

The cake is baked. The Republicans are cooked.

The Post ran a story this morning on the effect of "vibes" on the congressional elections. The story's takeaway was that how people feel is probably not going to change from now until Election Day, regardless of the facts. And how they feel is mad. The context of the story is a new poll by YouGov. In October 2018, Donald Trump's approval stood at -4 among indie voters. Last month, it stood at -53. The Democrats won over 40 House seats six years ago. At the rate things are going, the Republicans really are looking at an "extinction-level event."

But the trouble the GOP is facing isn't just vibes. People are mad for good, solid reasons, primarily the Iran War and its economic consequences. Even Trump's most reliable cohort is turning against him, according to the same YouGov poll. On July 11, net approval among white people without college degrees was zero. On July 25, it was -6. On July 11, net approval among people ages 45 to 64 was -12. On July 27, it was -29. White Gen X working-class voters used to be Trump's strongest base of power. Now they're like a millstone around his neck.

If the war ended today, would things improve? That appears to be the thinking of some GOP campaign operatives. In that Post article I mentioned, they said that when gas prices fall and the war ends, the vibe will shift. "Democrats are strapped for cash, nominating unelectable candidates in key districts, and Republicans are squarely on offense," said the National Republican Campaign Committee spokesman. In other words, the cake isn't baked yet.

Yet the president is not ending the war. Indeed, serious people seem to be getting tired of his gimmick. For the first time, as far as I can tell, the AP reported today on his habit of playing chicken with the Iranian regime – and then chickening out. The hope is duping voters, as well as investors, into believing that everything will go back to normal soon. The AP said:

It starts with a grim warning to Tehran that [Trump] is on the cusp of ordering US forces to “obliterate” its power plants or seize key parts of its oil industry if its leaders don’t quickly agree to US terms. ... It ends with him edging away with a last-minute declaration, sometimes at the behest of Gulf allies, that he’s going to give diplomacy more time.

The hardball strategy — one that Trump honed during his years competing in New York’s real estate scene and has employed in politics — aims to create movement in negotiation through pressure and chaos. But the tactic is facing a challenge with an Iranian theocracy that believes it holds a higher threshold for strategic pain than Washington.

Trump's "hardball strategy" is ordinary adolescent bullying by a more flattering name, and like all bullying, it is doomed to fail when faced with a determined adversary. Threats and warnings are revealed to be Sturm und Drang, and what's left is the image of a president too weak to do what needs to be done. The war is not going to end by the midterms. It could go on indefinitely under Trump's style of "leadership." And no one has seen anything like it.

"Has the US ever been cowed by threats as badly as Trump backing down with Iran?" said Nicholas Grossman, a political scientist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. "Not only did he make big threats, get nothing, then drop the threats anyway. Iran made big threats and the US backed down in the face of them. No matter how much Trump lies about it, the whole world sees what happened." Grossman added: "Other than brinksmanship with the USSR, I can’t think of any instance of the US backing down in the face of threats to anywhere near the degree Trump just did with Iran. And the Soviet Union was a nuclear-armed superpower! Am I missing any? Or is this the biggest US climb down ever?"

But if the cake is baked – if voter sentiment is fixed against the Republicans – it's because of Donald Trump. He isn't going to change. If his choices cause death, destruction and misery, it's never his fault. If public opinion disapproves, he just lies about public opinion. In a post written today, Trump lumped polls in with "fake new" and "the radical left." "My REAL Polling Numbers, not those made up by the Fake News Media, are the best they have ever been, and why wouldn't they be ...? Don't believe the Radical Left' Fake Poll numbers. They are Crooked and Corrupt, just like the Country Destroying Dumocrats are Crooked and Corrupt."

It was a crazy post.

And crazy does not change.

Except when it gets crazier, which is why the Iranians reportedly hired "senior psychologists" to help with peace talks. A strong president who follows through with his threats and warnings might be trusted to stand by his word, but a weak president who regularly TACOs out can't be. According to Jeremy Scahill, sources told him the Iranians now "recognize that we are dealing with a mentally incapacitated individual and we've had senior psychologists work up a psychological profile of what they think is going on with Trump's brain."

For all I know, Scahill is carrying water for the Iranians, but the point is well taken. Donald Trump does not make sense, even to his own supporters, who have stopped looking for sense in the madness. If there's hope for the GOP, it's in white-power gerrymandering and in con artists like Elon Musk spending tens of millions to demoralize Democratic turnout. Otherwise, though, the cake looks baked to me, and the Republicans looked cooked.